If you read anything about the later phases of European imperialism, one is struck by the way in which the need for, for example, perpetual British control over India or large swathes of Africa is always justified as being for the good of the subjugated people. And, of course, the perpetual control isn’t described as perpetual. It just needs to last a bit longer. Then a bit longer. You know, Friedman Units and all that. Somehow the actual desires of the people being controlled don’t seem to figure much into the calculations.

I thought of that as I read this bit of dialogue from the McClatchey stringers’ blog:

“Why, Mum? Why can’t I go to this shop?”

“Because it’s in the green zone baby, and you’re Iraqi.”

That was brought to my attention by the deeply unserious Jim Henley who fails to recognize that this is serving an important higher moral purpose.

See also this striking bit of state-of-the-art COIN doctrine in action.

Peter Beinart points out that Norman Podhoretz and Michael Ledeen are both crazy people. It’s too bad, though, that he doesn’t really say anything about the implications of the fact that Podhoretz’s decision to splash onto the scene with a series of demented writings about “Islamofascism” coincides so closely with Republican front runner Rudy Giuliani’s decision to embrace him very publicly. It seems to me that something’s gone badly wrong with a country where a major political figure sees associating himself with this kind of lunacy as a smart political move.

Kevin Drum notes that the American public expects General David Petraeus will lie under oath to congress “try to make things look better than they are” in Iraq rather than give sworn testimony that “will reflect the situation in Iraq.” It’s worth emphasizing in this regard how much the high regard in which Petraeus is held is a purely inside phenomenon. In particular, politicians and reporters alike who’ve spoken with Petraeus all seem to be very impressed with him. Consequently, other people like me who haven’t ever spoken with him, picked up some of this sentiment through osmosis.

The reality, though, doesn’t really seem to live up to the Legend of David Petraeus, and I’m not sure anything could. And the public is largely unfamiliar with the legend in the first place. So while Democrats should certainly be respectful when he testifies, there’s no reason to be super-deferential. If some other Bush administration appointee showed up and said some stuff that didn’t seem to be true, Democrats would give him shit about it and the public would expect them to. This situation, at the end of the day, isn’t really any different.

UPDATE: Just to drive the point home, Ed Gillespie’s set up a branch of the White House communications staff that’s “hard wired” into Petraeus’ shop. Which, again, is what you’d expect when a Bush appointee goes to congress for some high-profile testimony and illustrates the point that Petraeus should be treated accordingly.

One of the worst-appreciated points in the debate over national security policy is that the Bush administration’s post-9/11 policies shouldn’t be understood as counterterrorism measures that have, in some sense or another, “gone too far.” Rather, we need to grasp that they’ve been wholly ineffective and, as best one can tell, merely made things worse. The fact that George Bush’s invasion of Iraq has killed more Americans than Osama bin Laden’s airplane hijacking is one illustration of the point. Another would be this map I’ve borrowed from the Center for American Progress team. The blue marks are pre-9/11 terrorist attacks, the yellow ones are between 9/11 and Iraq, and the red ones are post-Iraq attacks. Iraq and Afghanistan are just marked in red rather than trying to make pins for each attack in those unfortunately countries.

Some CAP text helps explain what you’re seeing:

A study conducted by Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, research fellows at the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law, found that there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) since the Iraq invasion. When Iraq and Afghanistan, which together account for 80 percent of attacks and 67 percent of fatalities, were excluded, there was still a 35 percent per year increase in the number of jihadist terrorist attacks.

At this point, obviously, we can’t fix the problem with a time machine, but it sure would be nice.

Damien Cave and Stephen Farrell, “Troop Buildup, Yielding Slight Gains, Fails to Meet U.S. Goals”

Seven months after the American-led troop “surge” began, Baghdad has experienced modest security gains that have neither reversed the city’s underlying sectarian dynamic nor created a unified and trusted national government.

One thing to keep in mind about the “surge” is that the overall increase in the number of American soldiers wasn’t especially large relative to either the pre-existing size of the deployment or to the size of Iraq. But along with the “surge” of additional American forces into the country, there was a “surge” of forces away from non-Baghdad portions of Iraq into the capital. It would be extraordinary if that policy didn’t manage to produce “modest security gains” in Baghdad at the expense of problems elsewhere. The question is why one might think this kind of concentration of forces might be a good idea.

Roughly speaking, there are two possible ideas. One is that the security gains might be large enough to reach some kind of tipping point. You start with X troops in Baghdad. Then you “surge” up to X + Y troops. This surge produces a self-sustaining new situation, so now you surge down to fewer than X troops in Baghdad, allowing you to surge up elsewhere. That, though, hasn’t happened. The “underlying sectarian dynamic” is the same.

Alternatively, one might think that the national capital is uniquely important to political events, and that a special focus on Baghdad security might create the environment for political reconciliation. That, though, hasn’t happened either. The whole thing’s failed. Now people would like us to believe that other “bottom up” trends compensate for the failure of the plan. But since this cuts directly against the logic of the policy we’ve been pursuing since January, there’s no reason to think that anything we’re doing is having a substantial positive impact on whatever decentralized processes in Iraq may or may not be evolving in a good situation. The scorecard can’t just credit the US military presence for any good thing that happens anywhere in Iraq, while simultaneously arguing that without the military presence every bad thing about Iraq would be worse.

DoD photo by Staff Sgt. D. Myles Cullen, U.S. Air Force

George Packer’s latest article on Iraq comes as close as anything I’ve seen from the “the Iraq War is terrible but we have a moral obligation to continue occupying the country indefinitely against the will of the Iraqi people” crowd to dealing with the basic problem that their proposed solutions are unlikely to work:

Toby Dodge admitted that anyone arguing against immediate withdrawal has to face the “killer question: Why should American troops continue to die when the chances for success are so low?” He offered his answer “with an honest recognition that it doesn’t sound very plausible.”

Now wait for the answer, and note that Dodge is right, it really doesn’t sound plausible:

Dodge’s approach would bring the maximum pressure to bear on Iraqi politicians by persuading the region and the world—Iraq’s neighbors, the European Union, the United Nations—to come into the Green Zone, not as tools of American policy but as equal partners in an effort to force a political deal, not unlike the U.N.’s role in creating a government in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. This would imply an American confession of failure. Instead of pursuing more ambitious goals for democracy in the region, the U.S. would offer security guarantees to Iran and Syria in exchange for coöperation. “We then turn to the Iraqi government,” Dodge went on, “and say, ‘You’ve got to reform your government, make it more inclusive, less corrupt, more coherent, less sectarian.’ So the Iraqi government is reconstituted within a multilateral framework where the E.U., the U.N., and the U.S. are all singing from the same hymnbook.”

What I don’t understand is why Packer and Dodge don’t draw the obvious conclusion — it’s not a good idea to do something incredibly costly like staying in Iraq for many additional years on the basis of a not very plausible plan that’s unlikely to succeed. Instead, we get this:

For Dodge, the only reason to give this long-shot strategy a chance is the awfulness of the alternative. “I wouldn’t bet the house on it succeeding,” he said. “But I would bet my hopes and fears for Iraq on it.”

A costly, likely to fail strategy, however, isn’t an alternative to failure. Most likely, your likely to fail non-plausible strategy is just going to fail. And if Dodge wouldn’t “bet the house” on his plan succeeding, then what are we supposed to say to the National Guardsman whose family is going to lose its house if he’s injured in Iraq and can’t work anymore? If Dodge won’t “bet the house” on his plan, then why should our troops risk their lives for it? I couldn’t possibly imagine looking someone heading off to war in the eye and giving him this account of why his service is vital and necessary.